


all the years you have lived

by fetchmeagiraffe



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies)
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27075955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fetchmeagiraffe/pseuds/fetchmeagiraffe
Summary: “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”-Helen Keller500 meandering words about Thomas, and the apocalypse, and how the dead live on in his senses. Canon-level descriptions of violence and death.
Kudos: 3





	all the years you have lived

Life smells like salt in the air. 

Thomas wakes up - he doesn’t really expect to, but it happens, so he’s grateful - and immediately he knows he’s in someplace new. Someplace safe? He can only hope. (He thinks that’s what he feels in his chest now. Hope. It’s been a while, he isn’t certain.)

He takes a minute to breathe in the warm air, feel the humidity, taste the salt. When Ava Paige had died in front of him, she had smelled, faintly, of salt. Mostly copper, but also singed hair, and a final surge of acrid fear. (Fear was everywhere in the Last City.) This new hopeful place doesn’t smell anything like fear: no artifically clean air scrubbers, no chemical discharges, no thick oily smoke from rocket launchers or dust from rubble. No stale sweat from too many bodies in too little space. 

During that brief time where they were inside the city, but outside of WCKD, and not running or fighting - before the end of the end of the world - the Last City still didn’t smell right. Didn’t smell like the dust beyond the walls, or the fresh growth inside the Glade. Too many teenage bodies living and growing and sweating too close together had been its own special odor, but it had quickly become familiar, comforting. (Healthy.) Friendly. 

Newt hadn’t smelled like Ava Paige when he died. He hadn’t smelled like himself anymore either. Even before Newt had started coughing up black blood, Thomas could smell mildew and knew it was close. He was choking on Newt’s odor by the end. Rot and death, a menace that grows in the damp and settles in the blood. Thomas doesn’t think mildew will be much of a problem in this new shining place. (Hope already at work.) There’s moisture in the air but it’s clean, warm. The sun beating down on the tent roof is already burning it away. 

Thomas thinks of Teresa, the building burning around them both, hot metal and scorched skin. He can’t bear to remember her, has to remember her, forever falling just out of sight. 

(He thought WCKD headquarters was going to be his pyre, not hers.)

He’d seen it on her face in the lab. As soon as he was shot there was a distinct scent in the air - almost sickly sweet, overlaid with shit. He saw the look in her eyes and could figure out easily enough what sort of organ wound would cause that smell, that look, that feel of internal parts sliding around. (Thomas thinks however long the trip was to get here, he should be glad he can’t remember it.) He feels like he’s been sitting with death for a long time. An old friend that takes and takes, but finally, maybe, has given someone back. 

He braces one hand against his still-healing stomach, takes a deep breath, and stands. There’s a dull ache, but it’s quiet. Tolerable. 

Thomas walks out into sunlight, and lives.


End file.
